Canadian practitioners of Falun Gong stopped here on Aug. 12 on a tour to raise awareness about human rights abuses, including alleged government-sanctioned organ harvesting in China.
“We are on nationwide car tour raising awareness about the forced organ harvesting that’s happening in China,” explained Arek Rusek, a member of the five-person delegation that unfurled a banner promoting their cause outside the Centre Wellington municipal office last Friday afternoon.
Rusek said the timing of the tour is tied to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s upcoming visit to China.
“We want him to raise these issues when he visits China in a couple of weeks,” Rusek stated.
The tour comes on the heels of the release of a report by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia Pacific David Kilgour alleging the Chinese communist regime is killing people who practice the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong en masse in order to traffic their vital organs.
In a June 22 article, the Globe and Mail states the 800-page report indicates Chinese surgeons are transplanting between 60,000 and 100,000 organs a year, a number they say far surpasses the volume of kidneys, livers and hearts available from voluntary donors. The article states China’s own statistics show only 2,766 voluntary organ donations last year.
According to the article, Chinese doctors and government officials have disputed the research in the report, which was conducted largely by Falun Gong practitioners, although the report’s authors are not practitioners.
“We raised many of these issues 10 years ago, but had trouble with getting people to believe us,” said Rusek.
Today, in addition to the attention attracted by Matas and Kilgour’s report, in June the U.S. Congress passed a resolution that “condemns the practice of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China.” A similar resolution was passed by the European Parliament back in 2013.
In the intervening 10 years since they began raising the alarm, Rusek estimates a million people may have lost their lives to organ harvesting.
Practitioners say they have been subjected to widespread persecution for their beliefs dating back to 1999.
“Fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread popularity was overshadowing his own legacy, the Chinese Communist leader Jiang Zemin ordered the eradication of the traditional Chinese practice,” states a press release announcing the awareness tour. “The arbitrary arrest, torture, killing, incarceration, brainwashing, organ harvesting and demonization of Falun Gong continue to this day,” the release continues.
Among the delegation visiting Centre Wellington was Shunqin Gao, a Chinese Falun Gong practitioner who was jailed on about a dozen occasions over a 10-year period for her beliefs.
Through an interpreter she explained how she was beaten during her detention and injected repeatedly with unknown drugs which caused memory loss and loss of feeling in her limbs.
Her longest detention was a period of a more than a year in a labour camp, from which her son, a Canadian citizen, managed to get her released. He brought her to this country as a visitor and helped her apply for refugee status.
When her son found her at the camp, she couldn’t walk and he barely recognized her, Gao explained through an interpreter.
Rusek said the group is asking people in towns along the tour to sign a petition which can be found at www.stoporganharvesting.com or www.DAFOH.org.
“We want to spread awareness. If somebody wants to support us they can sign a petition which will go to the MPs and to the government. We want the Canadian government to start a dialogue with the Chinese government on the issue of human rights,” said Rusek. “We want the Canadian government to put human rights ahead of economic benefits because if we don’t get the human rights straightened out it doesn’t matter how much we benefit, because there are injustices.”
The group is also hoping municipal councils will pass resolutions calling on the Canadian government to speak out against human rights abuses in China. They left an information package for Mayor Kelly Linton after learning he was not in the office on the day of their visit.
